


Unending Song

by AuroraNova



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, Sto'Vo'Kor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 10:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17599355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNova/pseuds/AuroraNova
Summary: When awareness starts to return, Jadzia’s first thought is, Julian pulled off another medical miracle. Then she realizes she’s surrounded by two dozen puzzled Klingons, and she reassesses.She is, in fact, in Sto'Vo'Kor. It's not exactly how she envisioned death.





	Unending Song

**Author's Note:**

> Dealing with Jadzia's death in Private Universe Snapshots got me wanting more for her. A happy ending that was still canonical, for instance. Then I got this crazy idea, and here we are. 
> 
> References to TNG: "Firstborn." Also presumes that a standard year equals roughly three Klingon years (per Memory Alpha, based on Alexander saying he was three when his mother died.)

When awareness starts to return, Jadzia’s first thought is, _Julian pulled off another medical miracle_.

Then she realizes she’s surrounded by two dozen puzzled Klingons, and she reassesses. Maybe it's the wormhole aliens, Nerys’s Prophets, doing things a little differently this time.

“Another honored warrior has entered the halls of Sto’Vo’Kor!” says the nearest Klingon, and a great cheer goes up.

Sto’Vo’Kor? That would explain all the Klingons, not to mention the architecture.

Jadzia has never believed in the existence of an afterlife, Klingon or otherwise. She believes in the importance of faith to some people, yes, and in that sense, Sto’Vo’Kor is real. But this? This is something else entirely.

She wants a tricorder so she can start to make sense of it.

“And who are you, who joins us this day?” asks the Klingon who greeted her.

“Jadzia Dax,” she says, and then decides it would be better to use the Klingon format. “Jadzia, daughter of Kela, of the House of Martok.”

“Martok, eh? So you’ve some Klingon blood after all.”

“No. I married into the House of Martok.”

And then it hits her that she’s dead. Nobody returns from Sto’Vo’Kor, so even if she still exists, her life is over. Her hand goes over her pouch, where she feels… nothing. No Dax. Not like when Verad stole her symbiont, because she’s still Dax, with all the memories and the personality, but it confirms everything she fears.

Is this better than nothingness? She knows Worf would think so, but she’s not so sure.

Apparently nobody knows what to do with a newly deceased warrior who isn’t thrilled to be in Sto’Vo’Kor, so they leave her alone with her thoughts for a few minutes while she recalls everything she’s ever heard about Sto’Vo’Kor. Unless she’s sorely mistaken, her death didn’t meet the requirements for entry… except if she inspired someone else to do a great feat in her name.

Worf.

The good news is, if she waits another hundred years or so, he should join her (and he’d better not be in a rush to let the Dominion hasten his journey). The bad news is, she doesn’t really have much choice in the matter.

“Dax!”

Kang and Koloth are hurrying towards her, so at least she’s got some friends in Sto’Vo’Kor.

* * *

 

It turns out she’s the first non-Klingon in Sto’Vo’Kor. There are half-Klingons, several quarter-Klingons, and even a one-eighth-Klingon, but Jadzia is the first without a drop of Klingon blood.

Dax has always had a penchant for firsts.

Unlike what her experience with Sirella would’ve suggested, nobody questions her right to be here. As far as the residents of Sto’Vo’Kor are concerned, she wouldn’t be here if she didn’t deserve to be, and would she like some bloodwine? It’s better than any vintage she ever tasted while alive, everyone promises.

They do question her taste in fashion. In Sto’Vo’Kor you can change your clothes with a thought, and a Starfleet uniform stands out even more than a smooth forehead and spots. Jadzia keeps it anyway.

It’s only after they get some new warriors, killed fighting the Dominion, that she learns she died three months ago. At this, a swarm of Klingons start asking her about Gre’thor.

“I wasn’t there,” she says.

They plainly don’t believe her. “If you were dead and not here, you were in Gre’thor.”

“Like Harn,” someone says. “It took his daughter eight years to redeem his name.”

“Eight years?” scoffs a woman. “It took my son two days.”

“His daughter was six when he died. But you can tell us about Gre’thor.”

The conversation continues without Jadzia. Kang thinks for a minute before declaring, “It must work differently for Trill.” And, as far as he’s concerned, that’s the end of it.

Jadzia adds it to her list of questions and tries without success to think up a tricorder.

* * *

 

She’s making a name for herself as the woman not content to rest in Sto’Vo’Kor after an honorable life. No, Jadzia is doing something unheard of: she’s trying to figure out the afterlife.

The deeper in she goes, the longer people have been dead and less interested they are in anything but revelry and reliving past glories, so she sticks to the edges of Sto’Vo’Kor, where she and a few other recent arrivals ask about the war. She’s relieved to hear Benjamin returned to DS9; one of the more painful aspects of arriving in Sto’Vo’Kor was learning that he’d fled to Earth.

Though when she hears Dax returned to the station, her heart aches for Worf. He shouldn’t have to deal with that. What was the next host thinking?

It takes some time (she’s not sure how long, because time works differently in Sto’Vo’Kor and she hasn’t worked out the details yet) before someone comes through who’d stopped by the station and paid attention to personnel changes.

“Yes, Dax,” he says. “We heard about her. Never planned to have one of those…” he moves his hands around in a shape she understands to be a symbiont. “A weak woman. Not worthy of the name of Dax, if you ask me.”

And with that, he goes to find his brother and sister, leaving Jadzia grieving for everyone she left behind. A host who hadn’t been an initiate was unprecedented. Another first for Dax. Poor girl, she has to be having a rough time of it.

Worf. Oh, Worf. Benjamin would welcome the next – current – host, and her other friends would come around. Maybe this girl will help Julian not feel so guilty for not saving Jadzia, because he would be. But Worf… he’d never been entirely comfortable with the idea that part of her could live on for another thousand years, barring fatal accidents. He accepted it because he loved her, and now to face it when he was grieving? That's more than any widower should have to take on. Even Trill often prefer a clean break.

It’s around this time that she earns a new nickname: _breGH’ur tchAk,_ “the solemn one.”

* * *

 

It’s Alexander’s mother who understands her, in the end. Maybe it’s K’Ehleyr human side, maybe it’s leaving her young son in the world of the living, but she comes out one day and sits down where Jadzia is trying to figure out how people just appear in Sto’Vo’Kor and says, “I have heard you are Worf’s wife.”

“Yes.”

She holds out her hand in the human fashion. “K’Ehleyr.”

Jadzia isn’t entirely sure what to say to her husband’s ex-lover. “Jadzia.”

“Yes, I know.” She gazes over to where Jadzia is watching a new batch of warriors arrive. The Dominion has been adding to the population at a rapid pace. “I suspect neither of us expected to end up here.”

“I sure didn’t.”

“And yet here we are.”

“Apparently. I can’t figure out how.” She hasn’t given up yet, though.

“Does it matter?”

“I’m a science officer.”

“And I was an ambassador, but here that means very little. Still, we all grieve in our own way.”

“The dead grieve? I thought it was supposed to be the other way around.”

K’Ehleyr shakes her head. “Not all of us, but you are not the first, to be sure. I think women mourn our lives more than the men do.”

About that. “Are you waiting for Worf?”

K’Ehleyr seems to have expected the question. “No. I grieved, and I moved on. It is possible to find love here.”

Jadzia is not remotely interested in that. Although… she doesn’t want Worf to stay mired in his own mourning and spend the rest of his life alone. Death is more confusing than she’d anticipated.

“If you have his heart, he will come to you when he joins us,” says K’Ehleyr. “If he has yours, you will not begrudge him other women while he is alive.”

“Do people share?” she asks.

K’Ehleyr smiles. “Since when are Klingons good at sharing?”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“Oh, but it is,” says K’Ehleyr. “Do you really want to spend all eternity splitting custody of your husband?”

“Better than not having him at all.”

The other woman obviously disagrees. “Well, you won’t have to share him with me.”

“I could do worse,” she says.

“Please, tell me about my son,” says K’Ehleyr, and Jadzia is happy to oblige.

 _So you can make new friends after death_ , she thinks. _That’s good to know._

* * *

 

She gets the whole story of how she ended up here when Kor arrives, bearing a message of Worf’s love and his mission to destroy the Monac shipyards in her name. Jadzia is touched that Julian, Miles, and even Quark joined him and Martok to ensure her place in Sto’Vo’Kor.

Maybe she’s coming around to the afterlife.

“Your husband is a noble warrior,” says Kor, “and he still loves no one but you.”

“I’d be insulted if he moved on this quickly,” she replies, and Kor gives her a hearty slap on the shoulder.

Later, when she’s gotten every last detail Kor can provide about Worf, she asks about the new Dax.

“Ezri,” he says. “She is still lost, but she will find her way. She is Dax.”

They drink to that. It really is excellent bloodwine.

* * *

 

Gowron is not happy to see her. Apparently, Worf just killed him and is now the Chancellor of the Klingon Empire, and out of rage Gowron tries to brawl with Jadzia.

Fortunately for her, there are plenty of people around who are happy to fight him, and by the time he’s faced all of them (some days later), the edge has come off his anger. He goes off targ hunting with his father. Sto’Vo’Kor never runs out of targ.

Jadzia suspects Worf will pass the chancellorship to Martok, but oh, how she wishes she could’ve been there to see his moment of glory. Her Worf, risen from his dishonor to the very height of the Empire.

She wonders if Mogh is here somewhere, along with Worf’s mother. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t recognize them if they were standing right in front of her, so she’ll just have to wait until they come to her, or Worf comes along. Instead, she and Kor drink in honor of Worf’s victory, and Jadzia realizes she’s not quite as adjusted to death as she’d thought.

* * *

 

A lot of warriors come to Sto’Vo’Kor all at once, and then stop coming just as suddenly. Jadzia assumes this means the Dominion War is over and the Federation-Klingon-Romulan alliance won, but she’s still waiting for definitive word.

It comes before very long, from a warrior gravely injured in the last battle who committed Hegh’bat. “The Dominion surrendered,” he says. “The Empire is victorious!”

This causes much cheering among the assembled warriors. Jadzia isn’t the only one who’s been waiting to hear how the war turned out, though she is the most focused on details and the only person filling her time by trying to come up with a scientific explanation for the afterlife. There is singing, drinking, and a few good-natured brawls to round out the celebration. Even Gowron joins in, and by the time he notices Jadzia (she’s hard to miss in this crowd), he’s in a good enough mood that he doesn’t scowl at her, which is as much as she expects to get.

When the party is over, Jadzia goes back to her theorizing about Sto’Vo’Kor. She has so many questions, and with worrying about the war over, she can work on answering them while she waits for Worf. She has nothing but time.

Kang, Kor, and Koloth find her examining the area where new arrivals appear. “Dax,” says Kang, “Your war is over.”

“Yes, but my study of this place isn’t. And I don’t want to get lost in there.” She looks toward the inner realms of Sto’Vo’Kor, where she’s barely gone because she won’t find anything she needs there.

Kor claps her shoulder. “You are waiting for Worf.”

“I still love no one but him,” she says, using Kor’s earlier words.

“You will know when he is coming,” says Kang.

That’s very interesting. “How?”

Of course they aren’t interested in the details. “You will know. How does not matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“Nobody knows,” says Koloth, who probably means nobody has ever cared. “Until then, he must live without you, and you must enjoy Sto’Vo’Kor without him.”

“You cannot remain _breGH’ur tchAk_ ,” adds Kor. “It is not proper.”

“To be solemn?” Granted, she hasn’t seen much solemnity around here, but it is the Klingon afterlife. Unlike her husband, most of his people tend to be the opposite of serious.

“To lose sight of yourself,” says Kang.

That… actually makes a lot of sense. She’s willing to try. “I’m a scientist. I’m not going to stop trying to understand,” she tells them. “But I’m sure I can fit in some fun. Where do we go to have a good time around here?”

The three of them show her their favorite activities, and she learns some new songs. Kang despairs of her opera performances, but pronounces her drinking song voice acceptable. She gets better with a mek’leth, hunts a few targ (enough to know it’s not really her idea of fun), and even gets involved with theater productions. At first she’s only given roles of non-ridged species, but eventually she snaps at the group leader that she’s not a human and he’s a xenophobic p’taQ for thinking the species are interchangeable. He laughs and starts giving her better roles.

K’Ehleyr becomes a good friend and introduces her to a nice hiking trail, off which she discovers a pond where a few other people come for quiet contemplation. One day she meets Lukara, and Worf is going to love that story.

Along the way, she grieves. Not for Worf. There’s no doubt in her mind she’ll be reunited with him someday. So many others are lost to Jadzia now. Her friends on the station and her family are often in her thoughts, when she’s not distracting herself with entertainment or scientific theories. Will they all have their own afterlives? If so, is there a way to travel back and forth? She’d like to see her grandfather again. He didn’t believe in an afterlife, but then, neither did Jadzia, and here she is.

For the time being, all she can do is mourn those she left behind, and that’s what she does. It’s hard to miss so many people – and her whole life – all at once, but one day she realizes that despite it all, she’s happy to be in Sto’Vo’Kor. It’s better than the nothingness she’d always assumed came after death, and that thought is the beginning of peace.

She doesn’t come up with a scientific explanation for Sto’Vo’Kor, though she has the broad beginnings of a theory. It’s going to take her a very long time to work out the details. That’s fine. Time is something she has in abundance.

* * *

 

She’s been here nine years, give or take because time is weird here, when she knows Worf is coming. She drops her prop and rushes out of the rehearsal yelling, “Sorry, I have to go!” This isn’t unusual during the earlier stage of a person’s residence in Sto’Vo’Kor.

It’s far sooner than she expected. Though, as she’s racing too meet her husband, she remembers something he told her after Benjamin’s experience with temporal displacement. “Alexander travelled from forty years in the future, attempting to prevent my death.” They’d been thinking in standard years. Forty Klingon years sounds about right.

“Another honored warrior has entered the halls of Sto’Vo’Kor!”

He’s older but just as handsome, and he’s looking around with satisfaction. “Worf!” she yells, pushing her way through the crowd.

When he sees her, he smiles and does his own pushing. She runs and jumps into his arms, like they were never parted. “Jadzia,” he says, eyes only for her, and despite the very interested audience, they kiss for a long time.

“So,” she says when they eventually stop for air and he puts her down. “Is there anyone you need to wait for?”

“I do not expect Alexander will join us for many years yet.” She looks at him until he figures out what she really means, when he says, “You are still my par’Machai. I do not need to wait for another.”

“Good. I’ve done enough waiting for both of us.” She kisses him again. “Let’s go somewhere more private. And I want to know everything.”

“That will take some time.”

“We have eternity, Worf.”

“True.”

There’s no one she’d rather spend it with, and seeing the way he looks at her, she knows Worf feels the same way.


End file.
